The Unhoneymooners is the quintessential beach read. I am somewhat embarrassed by how quickly I read it and how much I enjoyed it; by my normal metrics, it shouldn't have even been on my radar.
Christina Lauren's premise is absurd: all of the guests, members of the wedding party, and - gasp - bride (Ami) and groom (Dane) become immediately and violently ill from the shellfish buffet at a the reception. All, that is, except the bride's twin sister, Olive, who is deathly allergic to seafood, the the groom's older brother, Ethan, who has a complete and total aversion to all buffets. He also has a complete and total aversion to Olive, who is equally (un)enamored of Ethan. But, suddenly, there's a fully-paid and non-refundable honeymoon to Maui up for grabs and neither Olive nor Ethan is about to let the other have all the fun. Also, Ami and Dane won the trip, and it must be taken as a honeymoon.
So, drama. Lots and lots of drama. I won't go as far as the quote on the cover and declare this book "downright hilarious," but it was an incredibly fun read, a statement I make despite the fact that it was totally predictable and also that I found a few of the plot elements more than a little far-fetched. (I've been on lots of snorkel trips. Lots. I've never once seen anyone attempt to change from their swimsuit to their clothes while still on the boat. But I digress.)
Four stars.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Sunday, August 11, 2019
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
97 Orchard simultaneously provides insight into the immigrant experience, eating habits and the evolution of American cuisine (particularly the ways in which ethnic foods first began to influence it), and life in New York circa 1900. Each of these topics could be its own volume, and in the case of, say The Long Way Home or The Food of a Younger Land, this premise has been proven. Yet Jane Ziegelman tackles the challenge deftly, incorporating these aspects like ingredients into a finely mixed dough.
In crafting her narrative, Ziegelman examines the lives and cuisines of five families who lived in the tenement apartments at 97 Orchard Street. First came the German Glockners, with their sauerkraut and heavy stews. The Glockners are an ideal starting point because Mr. Glockner actually built and owned the building and were the first to inhabit their apartment, moving into 97 Orchard Street in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. (Mr. Glockner's draft card, Ziegelman informs her reader, indicated he was a tailor.) The Glockners were followed by the Irish Moores, whose ethnic foods included little more than the potatoes that had failed them at home and oatcakes. The Irish immigration was largely comprised of teenagers, we learn, and following the brutal policies of the English, the ancient and rich food traditions of the Emerald Isle had been whittled down to potatoes. The Irish was generally happy to adopt and adapt the foods of their new land.
Due to their strict food laws, the Jewish immigrants were much less malleable, and Ziegelman then looks at how the Gumpertz family - German Jews - and the Rogarshevsky family, from Lithuania, lived and ate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Matzoh, kugel, knish, and carp featured heavily, although immigrants of all religions consumed significant amounts of cabbage, potatoes, and root vegetables. I was personally taken with the history of Jewish poultry farming inside the tenements themselves. While the language of the day was not, well, sensitive, I could certainly understand the horror of the journalists, social workers, and reformers who encountered the sights, sounds, and smells that accompanied this practice.
Last but not least, Ziegelman introduces the Baldizzis, Sicilians who immigrated illegally (he as a stowaway, she on a doctored passport) in the early-1920s. The Italians, Ziegelman notes, understood better than any other group that they were not wanted in America, and that they were here to do the hard and dirty jobs (digging subway tunnels, erecting skycrapers, building roads) that the natives did not want. Sound familiar? They bore their lot stoically - In questa vita si fa uva - but their food was their comfort, and the Italians were the least interested in adopting or adapting the foods of the new country. Italian grocers imported pastas, tomato sauces, and olive oils that not only tasted like home, but came from home. Americans were suspicious. Pretty much no one in 1925 would have believed that spaghetti and meatballs would one day be as quintessentially American as apple pie. (Pie, I learned, is pretty much the one truly American dish. Americans were known almost universally as "pie eaters" to wave after wave of immigrants.)
Through the decades, Ziegelman describes the evolution of the city's geographical and political landscape evolves, the food, and the perception of various immigrant groups (German in 1900 = model immigrant; German in 1914 = terror of the Hun). I enjoyed the tour, if you will immensely.
Five stars.
In crafting her narrative, Ziegelman examines the lives and cuisines of five families who lived in the tenement apartments at 97 Orchard Street. First came the German Glockners, with their sauerkraut and heavy stews. The Glockners are an ideal starting point because Mr. Glockner actually built and owned the building and were the first to inhabit their apartment, moving into 97 Orchard Street in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. (Mr. Glockner's draft card, Ziegelman informs her reader, indicated he was a tailor.) The Glockners were followed by the Irish Moores, whose ethnic foods included little more than the potatoes that had failed them at home and oatcakes. The Irish immigration was largely comprised of teenagers, we learn, and following the brutal policies of the English, the ancient and rich food traditions of the Emerald Isle had been whittled down to potatoes. The Irish was generally happy to adopt and adapt the foods of their new land.
Due to their strict food laws, the Jewish immigrants were much less malleable, and Ziegelman then looks at how the Gumpertz family - German Jews - and the Rogarshevsky family, from Lithuania, lived and ate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Matzoh, kugel, knish, and carp featured heavily, although immigrants of all religions consumed significant amounts of cabbage, potatoes, and root vegetables. I was personally taken with the history of Jewish poultry farming inside the tenements themselves. While the language of the day was not, well, sensitive, I could certainly understand the horror of the journalists, social workers, and reformers who encountered the sights, sounds, and smells that accompanied this practice.
Last but not least, Ziegelman introduces the Baldizzis, Sicilians who immigrated illegally (he as a stowaway, she on a doctored passport) in the early-1920s. The Italians, Ziegelman notes, understood better than any other group that they were not wanted in America, and that they were here to do the hard and dirty jobs (digging subway tunnels, erecting skycrapers, building roads) that the natives did not want. Sound familiar? They bore their lot stoically - In questa vita si fa uva - but their food was their comfort, and the Italians were the least interested in adopting or adapting the foods of the new country. Italian grocers imported pastas, tomato sauces, and olive oils that not only tasted like home, but came from home. Americans were suspicious. Pretty much no one in 1925 would have believed that spaghetti and meatballs would one day be as quintessentially American as apple pie. (Pie, I learned, is pretty much the one truly American dish. Americans were known almost universally as "pie eaters" to wave after wave of immigrants.)
Through the decades, Ziegelman describes the evolution of the city's geographical and political landscape evolves, the food, and the perception of various immigrant groups (German in 1900 = model immigrant; German in 1914 = terror of the Hun). I enjoyed the tour, if you will immensely.
Five stars.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
In 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake struck Alaska. The ground shook for 5 full minutes, seemingly solid ground turned to jelly, and the subsequent tidal wave swept away an entire village. The earthquake also put paid to the debate over continental drift and led to the current understanding of how tectonic plates interact. Henry Fountain discusses all of this in The Great Quake, which primarily reads as a fascinating scientific narrative, which only rarely delves so deeply into the hard science as to be too dense for the average reader. (In this way, it's more accessible than Earthquake Storms, which was also interesting, but frequently far too in the weeds for my liking!)
The Great Quake also serves as a travelogue of sorts, providing a detailed glimpse of life in and around Prince William Sound, the wild beauty and savage wilderness, particularly in the years immediately after statehood. A reader interested in the evolution of the lands and life in the past half century would be well served to follow Fountain's work with Mark Adams's Tip of the Iceberg.
Fountain's work feels especially timely given that the quake occurred 50-plus years ago: he has spent considerable time with survivors of the quake, as well as George Plafker, the geologist whose work ultimately shaped the current science of earthquakes, plate tectonics, continental drift, and all the other larger forces originating in the core of the blue marble we all call home. Plafker is now 90.
Five stars.
The Great Quake also serves as a travelogue of sorts, providing a detailed glimpse of life in and around Prince William Sound, the wild beauty and savage wilderness, particularly in the years immediately after statehood. A reader interested in the evolution of the lands and life in the past half century would be well served to follow Fountain's work with Mark Adams's Tip of the Iceberg.
Fountain's work feels especially timely given that the quake occurred 50-plus years ago: he has spent considerable time with survivors of the quake, as well as George Plafker, the geologist whose work ultimately shaped the current science of earthquakes, plate tectonics, continental drift, and all the other larger forces originating in the core of the blue marble we all call home. Plafker is now 90.
Five stars.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Summer at Tiffany
Summer at Tiffany is Marjorie Hart's delightful, fast, fun, nostalgic memoir of the summer of 1945, when she and her best friend, Marty Garrett, traveled to New York City for the summer and became the first women to ever work at Tiffany's. (Yes, as in, little blue box baubles.) Not only did she and Marty make history becoming the first women ever hired at the iconic flagship, but they also had a front row seat the V-E Day and V-J Day celebrations that punctuated the beginning and end of the summer. In between, they flirted with sailors, rubbed elbows with the rich and famous, worried over news from the Pacific, and experienced the joys and perils of life in the big city, a day at the ocean, and so much more.
The idea to spend the summer in New York came from some of Marjorie and Marty's Kappa sisters at the University of Iowa. Convinced it would be easy to find jobs as shop girls in the best department stores, Marjorie and Marty take the train east, only to be turned away from a succession of top stores. Through a combination of grit, pluck, luck, and a fortuitous reference through a previously-unknown family connection, they land jobs as pages where everyone from Judy Garland to the Windsors to the top mafiosos shop.
Remarkable as the stories about Tiffany are, it's the overriding sense of an era, the zeitgesit, that sets this memoir apart. The little details - about fashion, news reports, food, curfews, college songs, and attending church - are in many ways the heart of the book. I tore through this in a couple of nights, and it left me wanting more. It also left me a bit awed by Hart herself, who the internet tells me is 95 and still going strong. She's even on Twitter, which is more than I can say.
Five stars, for the book, and the author.
The idea to spend the summer in New York came from some of Marjorie and Marty's Kappa sisters at the University of Iowa. Convinced it would be easy to find jobs as shop girls in the best department stores, Marjorie and Marty take the train east, only to be turned away from a succession of top stores. Through a combination of grit, pluck, luck, and a fortuitous reference through a previously-unknown family connection, they land jobs as pages where everyone from Judy Garland to the Windsors to the top mafiosos shop.
Remarkable as the stories about Tiffany are, it's the overriding sense of an era, the zeitgesit, that sets this memoir apart. The little details - about fashion, news reports, food, curfews, college songs, and attending church - are in many ways the heart of the book. I tore through this in a couple of nights, and it left me wanting more. It also left me a bit awed by Hart herself, who the internet tells me is 95 and still going strong. She's even on Twitter, which is more than I can say.
Five stars, for the book, and the author.
Saturday, July 27, 2019
The Secret Life of Violet Grant
A friend shared The Secret Life of Violet Grant with me as her summer reading recommendation; happily, it had been on my list long enough that my turn on the library's waitlist came up just a week later. And what a great recommendation - I loved, loved, loved every page of this book, which is especially notable since I'm often ambivalent at best about dual-narrative fiction. So.
Narrative 1: It's 1964 and Vivian Schuyler, recent college graduate and aspiring writer (but current lackey) at New York's "Metropolitan" magazine receives a package, which turns out to be a suitcase addressed to Violet Grant, a great-aunt whose existence was heretofore unknown to Vivian. What's more the suitcase once belonged to Violet, who was last heard from 50 years earlier in pre-(first) world war Europe. Curiosity sparked, Vivian determines to unravel the mystery of who Violet Grant was and why her suitcase has re-appeared in New York.
Narrative 2: It's 1912-14 and Violet Schuyler Grant has defied all expectations for her class and gender by moving to England to pursue scientific studies at Oxford. Seduced by a fellow scientist, they marry and move to Berlin, where they have front-row seats to preparations for war. As the continent heads for calamity, Violet is drawn further into the orbit of a mysterious British army officer who formerly studied with her husband.
Beatriz Williams has written both of these narratives beautifully, and each is so complete that it could have comprised a lovely little read on its own. She has also carefully crafted the intersection of the two stories so that in the end The Secret Life of Violet Grant comes together perfectly. Williams gets bonus points for her epilogue, with an unexpected twist, which is always the most welcome kind.
Five stars.
Narrative 1: It's 1964 and Vivian Schuyler, recent college graduate and aspiring writer (but current lackey) at New York's "Metropolitan" magazine receives a package, which turns out to be a suitcase addressed to Violet Grant, a great-aunt whose existence was heretofore unknown to Vivian. What's more the suitcase once belonged to Violet, who was last heard from 50 years earlier in pre-(first) world war Europe. Curiosity sparked, Vivian determines to unravel the mystery of who Violet Grant was and why her suitcase has re-appeared in New York.
Narrative 2: It's 1912-14 and Violet Schuyler Grant has defied all expectations for her class and gender by moving to England to pursue scientific studies at Oxford. Seduced by a fellow scientist, they marry and move to Berlin, where they have front-row seats to preparations for war. As the continent heads for calamity, Violet is drawn further into the orbit of a mysterious British army officer who formerly studied with her husband.
Beatriz Williams has written both of these narratives beautifully, and each is so complete that it could have comprised a lovely little read on its own. She has also carefully crafted the intersection of the two stories so that in the end The Secret Life of Violet Grant comes together perfectly. Williams gets bonus points for her epilogue, with an unexpected twist, which is always the most welcome kind.
Five stars.
Friday, July 12, 2019
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser's meticulously researched Prairie Fires took me back to the reading of my youth, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. The project is immense, as Fraser takes on not only the life of Wilder, but her family history, that of her husband, and then their daughter, but also covers such sweeping territory as the Indian Wars, the New Deal, and the suffrage movement - essentially the entire landscape of Wilder's life.
The most engaging parts of the book are those that deal with Wilder herself, and particularly the ways in which her life, though the basis for the Little House books, actually differed from it. (I was most intrigued by the ways in which she chose to polish and preserve her parents for posterity.) Fraser fills in many blanks, and also allows readers to follow Wilder out of the prairies and into the Ozarks, where she spent the better part of six decades. (By the end of her life, Wilder had been a southerner much longer than she'd been a pioneer!)
More than anything, Prairie Fires brought home succinctly just how recent pioneer days were in the grand scheme of time. I found myself returning time and again to the fact that original pioneers/settlers were still alive when my parents were learning to walk. Granted, those still living had been riding in the wagon and not driving it, but all the same.
Fraser also presents food for thought with her examination of the psyche of Wilder and many like her: forced to depend on government "handouts" they resented the government all the more for it. Such perspectives bear consideration in today's time as much as they did in times past.
Prairie Fires starts rather slowly, and Fraser's work is sometimes a bit too deep in the weeds, particularly regarding the wanderings and politics of Wilder's only daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, but on the whole this is a worthy read for fans of Wilder who are interested in discovering the woman behind the myth.
Four stars.
The most engaging parts of the book are those that deal with Wilder herself, and particularly the ways in which her life, though the basis for the Little House books, actually differed from it. (I was most intrigued by the ways in which she chose to polish and preserve her parents for posterity.) Fraser fills in many blanks, and also allows readers to follow Wilder out of the prairies and into the Ozarks, where she spent the better part of six decades. (By the end of her life, Wilder had been a southerner much longer than she'd been a pioneer!)
More than anything, Prairie Fires brought home succinctly just how recent pioneer days were in the grand scheme of time. I found myself returning time and again to the fact that original pioneers/settlers were still alive when my parents were learning to walk. Granted, those still living had been riding in the wagon and not driving it, but all the same.
Fraser also presents food for thought with her examination of the psyche of Wilder and many like her: forced to depend on government "handouts" they resented the government all the more for it. Such perspectives bear consideration in today's time as much as they did in times past.
Prairie Fires starts rather slowly, and Fraser's work is sometimes a bit too deep in the weeds, particularly regarding the wanderings and politics of Wilder's only daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, but on the whole this is a worthy read for fans of Wilder who are interested in discovering the woman behind the myth.
Four stars.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
The Water is Wide
The Water is Wide, Pat Conroy's memoir of a year teaching in a sea islands school off the coast of South Carolina circa 1969, is a fascinating glimpse into the lives and conditions of the people on little Yamacraw Island (the fictional name of Daufuskie Island).
Conroy is young and more than a little idealistic when he arrives on Yamacraw/Daufuskie to teach the island's children, virtually all of whom are black, poor, descended directly from the slaves who worked the island's plantations, and have never journeyed farther than Savannah, some 13 miles away. Though Conroy is teaching the upper grades (5-8), he discovers within the first week that a plurality of his students can neither read nor write, and some are unable to recite the alphabet or add 1+1.
Conroy quickly adapts his teaching methods, working to gain the trust of the children and their families, while incurring the ire of the other teacher, Mrs. Brown, who is most distressed at his refusal to employ corporal punishment. Throughout the year Conroy butts head repeatedly with both Brown and the district heads on mainland South Carolina; this combined with his total racial tolerance and outright support of school integration, ultimately dooms his cause and the district fires him after the first year.
The Water is Wide is inspiring and depressing in equal measures, and makes Tony Danza's year in Philadelphia look like a walk in the park. Conroy brings to life not only his students but the ways of the Gullah people and a tiny forgotten corner of the country. In that way, I was regularly reminded of Chesapeake Requiem, another island whose way of life is quickly being upended.
Five stars.
Conroy is young and more than a little idealistic when he arrives on Yamacraw/Daufuskie to teach the island's children, virtually all of whom are black, poor, descended directly from the slaves who worked the island's plantations, and have never journeyed farther than Savannah, some 13 miles away. Though Conroy is teaching the upper grades (5-8), he discovers within the first week that a plurality of his students can neither read nor write, and some are unable to recite the alphabet or add 1+1.
Conroy quickly adapts his teaching methods, working to gain the trust of the children and their families, while incurring the ire of the other teacher, Mrs. Brown, who is most distressed at his refusal to employ corporal punishment. Throughout the year Conroy butts head repeatedly with both Brown and the district heads on mainland South Carolina; this combined with his total racial tolerance and outright support of school integration, ultimately dooms his cause and the district fires him after the first year.
The Water is Wide is inspiring and depressing in equal measures, and makes Tony Danza's year in Philadelphia look like a walk in the park. Conroy brings to life not only his students but the ways of the Gullah people and a tiny forgotten corner of the country. In that way, I was regularly reminded of Chesapeake Requiem, another island whose way of life is quickly being upended.
Five stars.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)